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While this site is no longer the active community it once was (back in the 2007-2009), it still remains a great resource for skeptical, de-converting or former believers (mainly Christians). As such, I just did some house cleaning fixing broken links (I lost the original domain), deleting spam from the comments, etc.

I am sure there will continuously be a new group of de-converts who are interested in these topics but many of the original contributors have moved on from these types of discussions. Maybe someday, this site will have a born again experience.

When I launched this blog back in 2007, I was in the process of de-converting from Christianity and trying to come to terms with my non-belief while pondering how I even could have believed in the first place. The Bible, which I once believed to be the Word of God without contradiction, became a book of myths, fairy tales and riddled with contradictions. The God described in the Bible, who I once believed to be a loving Father in heaven, became an evil psychopath who used humans as pawns in some wicked cosmic game (see this blog). Through this site, I found many others who were dealing with the same issues and we all wrote blogs and engaged each other in discussion. Before our two year anniversary, we had reached 1,000,000 views and had over 20,000 comments.

Gradually, we all began contributing less and at some point, the blog atrophied and primarily remained active by Leo, through comments on the Mormon thread and spam.

Why did we quit contributing? I know for me, I came to a point that I just didn’t care anymore. Many of my former beliefs became so ridiculous to me, that it seemed pointless to even discuss it. I became firmly rooted in the “other side” and I no longer needed to come to terms with my non-belief, it was a reality. I am interested to know if this was the case for the others also. In other words, I became fully transformed by changing the way I think.

I’m assuming there are constantly new groups of de-converts who are walking the same journey we walked and I would love for these groups to keep the blog alive as it’s a useful process to come to terms with non-belief. I’m not sure at this point on how to connect with these individuals but please comment here if you would like to become a contributor to this blog.

I will try to do a soft re-launch in 2015 and see where things go. I will dig through my email and see if I have any de-conversion stories I requested and begin publishing those. I welcome any other suggestions.

9. The pastoral duties of men who have children might distract them from the responsibility of being a parent.

8. The physique of men indicates that they are more suited to such tasks as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do ministerial tasks.

7. Man was created before woman, obviously as a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. Their conduct at football and basketball games demonstrates this.

5. Some men are handsome, and this will distract women worshipers.

4. Pastors need to nurture their congregations. But this is not a traditional male role. Throughout history, women have been recognized as not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more fervently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are prone to violence. No really masculine man wants to settle disputes except by fighting about them. Thus they would be poor role models as well as dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was betrayed by a man. His lack of faith and ensuing punishment remind us of the subordinated position that all men should take.

1. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep sidewalks, repair the church roof, and perhaps even lead the song service on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the church.

[original source unknown: Please let me know if you know the author so we can properly credit the brilliant originator]

An interesting myth that is widely embraced by the Christian church today is the story of the impregnation of a young Jewish woman by YHWH 2000 years ago. The Apostles Creed includes the lines:

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary

There are several issues with the story of the virgin birth. The first, of course, is the parallel of this story with many other such conceptions of “gods” over the course of history. I read one Christian’s rebuttal this argument which stated that this is in fact more of a declaration of its truth since the devil always tries to counterfeit truth. Well, he had quite a head start on this one.

The second is the genesis of the virgin birth story itself. The first person to write about an individual named Jesus was Paul, the Apostle. In his letters, there is no mention of the virgin birth of Jesus. One would think if this was such an important doctrine to be embraced as a core belief of Christianity, it would be trumpeted by Christianity’s greatest evangelist…

In a classic case of irony, Christians tried to get the statement “No God, No Peace. Know God, Know Peace” to trend today on Twitter.

The result of this effort was the phrase “No God” became the #1 trending topic.

Please understand that atheists have been trying for months to get an atheist related topic to trend and this one was gifted to us.

“God” must be looking out for us 🙂 Of course, I should note that the phrase really should be “Know God. No Peace. No God. Know Peace.”

– The de-Convert

Updates:

The originator of the initial tweet is reported to be @RevRunWisdom. Thanks Rev Run!!!!!

We are officially declaring Oct 20th as “No God Day!” We’ll celebrate again next year.

In an apparent attempt to slow the increase traffic to Twitter (lots of the “fail whale” page today). after trending all day as #1, the “No God” hashtag was removed from the trending topic list even though my tests show that it’s still the #1 trending topic. Then as a part of the cover-up, Twitter listed “no god” as being synonymous with “Know God” and displayed it as “Know God.” Of course, this is backfiring as there are now new cries of “CENSORSHIP!!!!”

On Monday, 12 October, a few days after my 44th birthday, I had surgery on my cervical spine to replace two degenerative discs. This could almost be classed as an emergency surgery since I started having severe pain three weeks prior when my left C7 nerve root became impacted. There were two large left paracentral disc protrusions which caused impingement of the spinal cord. From my initial visits to my doctor, there it was an MRI on the 2nd, consultation w/my doctor on the 5th, consultation with a Neurosurgeon on the 6th, pre-op on the 7th, and surgery on the 12th. Bottom line, it all happened pretty quickly for me. I should note that I have not been in a hospital since birth and have enjoyed a relatively healthy life that has never included this type of pain (I don’t even get headaches).

This is my first crisis since de-conversion and I must say it was a good, solid test of my non-faith. In this blog, we have discussed the fact that dealing with crisis is one of the major reasons humanity has created gods and developed religious beliefs. I was faced with my first challenge of dealing with crisis without having my imaginary deity to run to for security, comfort and the general “it’s going to be alright.”

The other issue I faced was my response to my Christian family and friends. Even though it was difficult at times, I was respectful and said “amen” and “thank you” to the many prayers I received. I realized early on that they needed to say those prayers not to necessarily make me feel better but to allow them to feel secure about my surgery and that I’d be ok. Initially, their prayers were for my healing (I come from a Pentecostal/Charismatic background). I wanted to explain to them that God doesn’t perform these types of miracles (where degenerative discs are regenerated) but I did not. I wanted to explain to them that the only miracles God performs are the once that are scientifically possible (like cancer going into remission, etc.) but, of course, I kept those thoughts to myself. I wanted to challenge them to find ONE instance where an arm or a leg was grown back via a miracle knowing that there are no such cases…

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Whether or not you believe in God, you should live your life with love, kindness, compassion, mercy and tolerance while trying to make the world a better place. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will have made a positive impact on those around you. If there is a benevolent God reviewing your life, you will be judged on your actions and not just on your ability to blindly believe in creeds- when there is a significant lack of evidence on how to define God or if he/she even exists.